Marilyn Manson on 'Inventing' Grunge, Sons of Anarchy, and Why He's a Furby

The rocker is as candid and foul-mouthed as ever.

Back in the 1990s, industrial-rock provocateur Marilyn Manson's emergence on the scene caused some hysteria in more conservative pockets of America. His eponymous band's concerts drew bomb threats from Christian militantsbefore the PMRC faithful scapegoated him for the 1999 Columbine massacre; the puritanical outcry forced many adolescents to hide their copies of '96's Antichrist Superstar. The new millennium proved bumpy for the self-proclaimed "Mephistopheles of Los Angeles," both personally and creatively. But talking on the phone from a West Hollywood hotel room recently, the 46-year-old singer sounded optimistic, loquacious, even downright bubbly (well, bubbly by his standards, at least). This has already been a good year for Manson's career. A few early reviews of ­The Pale Emperor his first album in three years (out today, and streaming here), laud it as his eeriest, sleaziest, finest work since his '90s heyday. We spoke to the man whose Social Security card reads Brian Warner about all things Marilyn Manson and discovered that, while he's not as controversial as he used to be, he's still pretty weird. Praise Satan for that.

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ESQUIRE.COM: For Emperor, you collaborated with Tyler Bates, who's better known for scoring Guardians of the Galaxy and other films. How was this recording process different from previous experiences?

MARILYN MANSON: Normally, it was a pain in the ass for everyone who worked with me to drag me into the studio around 3 a.m. to do my vocals. Making this record, I would wake up, go running, and not from police or from women, just running as an exercise, and I would go sing, usually, when the sun was setting. Tyler sat in front of me with his guitar and his amp. We wouldn't talk about what the songs were going to be. I'd say, "Just play, give me the mic, go." Of course we'd elaborate on it later, but for the most part, the guitar and the vocal takes are the original, like, first take. If I fucked something up or if he fucked something up, we'd start from the beginning and do it together.

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ESQ: Your recent acting gigs have been less you playing yourself and more you playing, well, not you. Is that indicative of a greater interest in acting?

MM: Well, the only real part was, mostly, Sons of Anarchy. That began with me becoming friends with Shooter Jennings. I was a fan of his music, not knowing that he was a fan of mine, and I met him. Essentially, I just wanted to have a song on the show. It's my dad's favorite show. I was literally at my father's house after my mother died, and the phone call came while I was sitting there at the table talking to my father who was very sick at the time. He had some sort of infection and his legs looked like if he was on Walking Dead. They definitely would've killed him two episodes earlier. It was that bad. Then I get a phone call saying, "You're on Sons of Anarchy," and I told my dad, and it made him very fucking happy. And my dad, the other night at my birthday party, got completely stoned on marijuana cigarettes with, potentially, some of the cast members. I don't want to incriminate any of them. The first day, I showed up—the director, Paris [Barclay], he's black, and I had to say some very racist things in my very first episode. The thing I learned most was I tend to talk a lot with my hands, and I had to sit very still. The direction from Paris was, "Just make it all about the moments in between what you say, and it's all in your face." I asked Charlie [Hunnam], because most of my scenes were with him, there was one line where I had to say "I miss my dogs," and I couldn't figure out how I wanted to deliver that. He said, "Why don't you just act like you're crazy, but don't know it, like in real life?"

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ESQ: We've got to ask how you and Courtney Love buried the hatchet?

MM: We never really had a falling out. We've always been weird with each other, because she's slept with pretty much every one of my friends, supposedly. Not me, though. She, one time, told me she was mad at me because I didn't want to fuck her and I was smarter than her. I said, "Well, you kind of proved your own point right there on that one." But it was cool. We didn't work any scenes together [on SoA], but I saw her on the red carpet. Her dress broke, and I said, "You okay? Your pussy didn't show, did it?" and she said, "No," and I went, "Thank God! That would've been horrible!" That was the only time I fucked with her. Other than that, I'm cool with Courtney. It was funny, because I ran into Billy [Corgan], and a lot of people think there was some kind of falling out. It was mostly that he wrote a strongly worded letter about how Rose McGowan would ruin my life and ruin my career if I stayed with her, which was good advice, and he wrote it as a letter, which is very polite. There is sort of a guy code that I abide by where he totally offered his advice, and he was genuinely just looking out for my best interests. I hadn't seen him in 15 years. I had forgotten how close we were, having not seen him in so long. He's the one who taught me how to play guitar, so if it sucks or it's good, it's his fault.

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ESQ: A whole bunch of Internet headlines have you saying you came up with the term "grunge" while writing a Nirvana review way back when. I wondered if maybe that was meant to be tongue in cheek?

MM: Yeah, let me clarify that. I didn't say I invented the word. I said I coined it, in that I popularized it. I think I actually wrote "grungy." But it is pretty amusing that that became a headline. I'm like a Furby. You can push me, and then your sound bite comes out, and there you have your headline. So to clarify, I merely claimed that I popularized the word, which is pretty much not accurate, considering the distribution of the periodical that I wrote it in. But I like to self-aggrandize.

ESQ: What do you think the headline of this article should be?

MM: "Marilyn Manson deserves to have his dick sucked for creating the word 'grunge,' and for also making rock 'n' roll cool again, because he's a hooligan."